Let’s hope one essential fact won’t be lost when we remember Martin Luther King Jr.: He was a Gospel preacher.Indeed, King’s son, Martin Luther King III, told the Post [in 2011] that he believes his father was “anointed,” and “chosen by God to make the kind of impact that he made.”
“If we overlook the fact that Dr. King was a man of God, a follower of Jesus Christ, we miss the point of his life and his death,” said Kelly Johnson, founder of Two By Two prayer ministries in Memphis.
Johnson and others believe the ultimate legacy of King, a fourth-generation Baptist preacher, will be more theological and less social or political.
“People go right to the Dr. part, but they forget that before the Dr. part came the Rev. part, ” Dr. Luther Ivory, who teaches religion at Rhodes College, told me. “It was King’s response to the gospel of Jesus Christ that changed him, and the world around him. It was the Rev. part that made all the difference.”
King described himself by his spiritual vocation. “In the quiet recesses of my heart, I am fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist preacher,” he once said.
King’s dream was “deeply rooted in the American dream” but even more deeply rooted in the gospels. “If one is truly devoted to the religion of Jesus, he will seek to rid the Earth of social evils,” he once said.
King grew up wanting to be a lawyer or doctor, not a preacher like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather. But at Morehouse College, he met Dr. Benjamin Mays, a rational man who wed mind, body and soul. King began to see the ministry as a spiritual force for social change.
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article courtesy of BCNN1.com
